Title IX at 50: Warner Paved Way to Legend Status with Record Rounds
By
Geoff Kimmerly
MHSAA.com senior editor
October 5, 2021
Girls golf teams across the Lower Peninsula have begun postseason play with Regionals this week, with a Monday tournament featuring the last two Division 1 Finals champions – 2020 winner Kate Brody of Grand Blanc shooting a 67 to edge 2019 medalist Allison Cui of Okemos by four strokes. The Oct. 15-16 Finals rematch at The Meadows at Grand Valley State University is sure to be a classic.
Brody’s 67 also recalls the unforgettable closing round fired by then-Livonia Churchill sophomore Shannon Warner on the way to winning the first of her back-to-back LPD1 championships during the Spring 2006 season.
Warner’s second-round 67 that June 3 followed a first-round 69 and tied the Finals record 18-hole score shot by Whitehall’s Laura Kueny on the same course in LPD3 a year earlier. But Warner’s combined 136 broke Kueny’s 36-hole Finals record, also set the year before, by one stroke.
Warner was an individual Finals qualifier in 2006, and she bested the field by 11 strokes. She also was an individual qualifier in Spring 2007 when she shot a 145 at Forest Akers West to win by five. Girls golf in the Lower Peninsula then was switched to the fall, and Warner returned to the Division 1 Finals four months after her second championship and tied for fifth, four strokes back.
Warner played her first three collegiate seasons at Michigan State University and finished her college career in 2012 at Eastern Michigan University, earning first-team all-Mid-American Conference honors as a senior. She won the Golf Association of Michigan Women's Championship in 2013.
Second Half's weekly Title IX Celebration posts are sponsored by Michigan Army National Guard.
Previous Title IX at 50 Spotlights
Sept. 28: Taylor Kennedy Gymnasts Earn Fame as 1st Champions - Read
Sept. 21: Portage Northern Star Byington Becomes Play-by-Play Pioneer - Read
Sept. 14: Guerra/Groat Legacy Continues to Serve St. Philip Well - Read
Sept. 7: Best-Ever Conversation Must Include Leland's Glass - Read
Aug. 31: We Will Celebrate Many Who Paved the Way - Read
After String of Second Places, Big Bay Takes Big Step to Top Finals Field
By
Jason Juno
Special for MHSAA.com
May 28, 2026
WATERSMEET — Big Bay de Noc’s girls golf team has finished runner-up the past three years at the Upper Peninsula Division 3 Final.
First, the Black Bears finished second to a Cedarville team in the last season of a three-year championship run. Then the last two years, they took second behind traditional U.P. power Ontonagon.
Wednesday, it was finally their turn.
Big Bay de Noc won at Lac Vieux Desert Golf Course in Watersmeet, breezing past the second-place Gladiators 475-532 to win its first Finals title since 2005.
“Ontonagon’s been a great golf team,” Big Bay de Noc coach Alex Ranguette said. “They’ve actually beaten us the past two years for U.P. Finals, so it feels good to finally get one.”
The Black Bears did it with four golfers placing among the top 10 compared to two for Ontonagon. Junior Payton Pederson placed second with a 108, senior Caragan Thill tied for third with a 110, eighth grader Ivy Gates carded a 121 to finish seventh and another eighth grader, Karlee Kuehl, was 10th with a 136.
“The girls came out, started slow,” Ranguette said. “It was a little shaky to begin with, but they really turned it around. I got five girls — two eighth graders this year that just joined who have been very strong for me, two seniors who have been wonderful all year, a junior who placed second. My senior Carrigan placed third.”
Pederson and Thill alternated as Big Bay de Noc’s lowest-scoring golfer all year.
“They both shot well,” Ranguette said. “They just played unreal. They started slow, but they held it together and it was pretty awesome to watch them finish strong.”
Ontonagon graduated important seniors last year, but so did his team. Ranguette said it then came down to the younger golfers – and the results speak for themselves.
“I was fortunate enough to have two young kids that really played well,” he said.
The Gladiators, of course, still went home with a couple of trophies. Besides the runner-up hardware, junior Summer Stites repeated as a U.P. champion.
She shot a 103, which was five strokes better than Pederson.
“It’s exciting, it’s fun,” Stites said.
She was expected to win this year after being a bit of a surprise winner emerging from a strong competition with her own teammates last year.
“I feel like there’s more pressure on me to play better than I did last year. But I didn’t meet that goal,” said Stites, who won with a 98 a year ago.
Ontonagon coach Jim Jessup is excited she has a chance to make it a three-peat.
“She deserves it, she works really hard,” he said. “She’s improved, unfortunately not to where she wants to be, but she can play really well. We have some more stuff to work on. We got another year for her, so we can do a three-peat, if we’re lucky, if she keeps working on it.”
PHOTOS (Top) Big Bay de Noc’s Caragan Thill lines up a putt during the Upper Peninsula Division 3 Final on Wednesday. (Middle) Ontonagon’s Summer Stites follows her shot. (Photos by Jason Juno.)